


Decay

by mintkupocream



Category: Undertale
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Death, Mostly self-reflection on Toriel's part, Only a little bit shippy, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Sad mom is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintkupocream/pseuds/mintkupocream
Summary: Why must she think of that time?That time in the Ruins.Her own personal prison of constant decay.





	Decay

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Everyone!  
> It has been an incredibly long time since I've written any fiction; I work more in art/comics, but when this idea came to me at midnight last night, I felt it made more sense as a fic than a comic, and so I decided to give some writing a try again . Please enjoy!

The day had started without those dark reflections in her mirror. The weather promised sun with only occasional clouds, and it was deemed a lovely day for Toriel to meet up with Sans to keep up to date with the whole dating gig. It was no one's fault that the winds were blowing differently again. No mortal could control when Summer's hot breathe turned into the chill gasps of Fall.  


_But I'm no mortal._  


The thought seeped into Toriel's bones along with the wind's chill. Gently, she smoothed the back of her skirt and settled onto a nearby park bench to take it all in. She looked down at her hands, with their Winter white fur, and thought of that constant stillness to come in the world around her, as it had come permentantly to her own being.  


Deeply breathing in to calm herself, she caught the familiar scent of dry, crisp leaves mingling with the robust greeness of the remaining Summer. Soon, all that greeness would wilt away entirely, and the rot would give way to nothingness. That was how it worked here on the surface. The decay of the leaves was short lived here; not the like in the Ruins. She found herself suddenly oddly nostalgic for that time again. Turning her head upwards, a cloud sheilded her vision from the brilliant sun, but it was still so much brighter than that life from before. Why must she think of that time?  


That time in the Ruins.  


Her own personal prison of constant decay.  


On the night that Toriel had first returned to the place once known as Home, she had paid her last respects for her fallen children, and then she had returned to what was once her house. She had thrown herself onto the foot of her old bed from her older life, and the dust had burst into the air to form an underground cloud; mixing with her tears to transform them into rivers of mud on her face. She had left them there to harden as her sobs echoed the halls, with the vain hope her heart would harden along with them. She had awoken after an unknown passage of time feeling sticky and dry and hollow, and mechanically set to work tidying the area without a thought of food for several days hence. Her eventual routine had included this ritual monthly, albeit with less dust.  


How long had she lived in the Ruins? It mattered not, but it had changed her. It gave her an appreciation for the soft dying that had ended with the life of her body's son, Asriel. That old dying, that had been a candle: warm, slow, sweet scented, and measured. It had been a joy to know that her life was powering another; such a beautiful other. Would she ever feel that again? At this point, she would settle for the decay. She had observed so much decay there in the Ruins. Much of it was slow, and already apparent as she had begun her structural repairs of the building: the chipping of paint; the discoloring of the fabric in her favorite chair, the curling of the pages of her books. There had been one thing down there that decayed far faster than anything else, though. An intruder from another world, reminding her of another: the golden flowers.  


So carefully, she had wrapped the sticky seeds found on the limp body, and had transported them down to the deepest part of the Ruins, where the sun meekly pushed through the barrier overhead. The small swath of ground underneath that solitary warm spot had made both the final resting place of the first of her beloved human children, and the only place within the ancient structure that the flowers would bloom. Well, it was the only spot she had wanted them to bloom; marking Chara's grave, and giving her a task to do when she visited.  


Toriel had watered them regularly, and whenever the patch had grown particularly thick, she had pulled a pair of scizzors out from the recesses of her sleeves, and _snip, snip,_ the cord to the flowers' life force was severed. Back in her house in old Home, they spent their last few days in vases. The other Underground plants she had kept properly potted, and tended well enough, although anything that could grow in such conditions to begin with seemed hard to kill off without explicit intention. The cut flowers could very well have lasted weeks at a time themselves, also being of a very hardy stock, but Toriel had never tended them after their initial arrangement had been settled. The water would be dried up within a few days, and instead of replenishing their supply, she had choosen to watch.  


Each time, a few of the petal tips would faulter slightly from their original, perky continence. They would wrinkle, like the old woman staring at them should have been doing. Then, quite suddenly, they would loose their grip upon their stem and cascade down to the table. That was only the first few, however. Most of the remaining petals stayed in place and transformed from their signature golden hue into a sickly, shriveled brown; plastered to a motley brown and gray stem that lost its bouncy upright stance and sagged slowly, inch by inch, day by day, to meet the surface of the table, coughing its pollen all the while in a muck about it. Whenever a new human child made a temporary stay in her abode, she had carefully cleaned around the vases during this phase, but she had never removed the flowers until she was certain every part was completely and thoroughly dead.  


At that point, Toriel would take a cloth and wrap up the flower remains, vase and all. When it was time in her day to visit the fresh flowers again, she would bring them along; _crunch, crunc_ over the rotting leaves, and she would dump them there at the grave. Their lives had been bright, fragrant, delicate, and mostly spent dying, just like the children. Just like every child she had ever held in her arms. Every single one of them. Except for this last one now. Except for this last one for now. But although they had survived so much, Frisk's life would wilt away, sooner than later, and Toriel's would not. No, she was a stone. A weather beaten stone, but a stone nonetheless; undying, hard, permenant, never with enough love for those around her. Never would she wilt; her only hope was to be completely shattered, to be smashed to pieces; to be ground into dust, and to be-  


"Tori?"  
There was the voice, reverberating with concern and warmth, and then there was the hand on her cheek, doing the same. Sans was next to her now, on the bench in the park. That was were she was. Not in the Ruins. Out in the sunshine amid plants. At the park, to have a lovely time with a lovely person. She blinked, and realized she had been crying. As she lowered her head, Sans removed his hand, but her tears followed and plopped down onto his leg.  
He looked briefly down at the wet spot, then back up to her and remarked calmly, "I guess we gotta call a _rain date._ "  


Weak as the joke was, Toriel laughed loudly; the hearty laugh of someone exhuasted from tears. The pain remained, but it blew to the side for the moment; a cool gust flitting through the trees. Autumn was coming. The short season of quick decay that gives way to the long expanse of frozen stillness would arrive soon enough, but it wasn't fully in hold yet. The trees were still green and lively. For just a moment, the clouds parted from the sun, and Summer's warmth enveloped her again as she laughed, then cried, then laughed again as Sans held onto her. It was a moment of Summer; a feeling of hope that good days will never end.  


A reminder that it was still up to Toriel herself whether or not she decayed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism and nice words welcome!


End file.
